Pretty, showy flowers are almost never responsible for hay fever. It's usually the ugly ones that produce the kind of pollen that becomes airborne.

It amazes me that otherwise well-read, classically educated people still believe that goldenrod causes hay fever.

It doesn't, of course. But when folks all around the Bay are sneezing their heads off, only a fool would try to make people believe that goldenrod has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with hay fever. One Mobile allergy doctor admits he has abandoned all attempts to talk his patients out of their rabid fear of goldenrod. But I'm going to try.

I've boiled it down to a pretty simple formula. Clip this out, put it in your wallet, read it every time you sneeze:

If you notice the flowers and the pollen, it won't give you hay fever. It's the plants whose flowers you don't notice that give you fits.

Oak trees, grasses and ragweeds are allergy factories, doctors tell us, responsible for most of the plant-related allergies in Mobile. But when was the last time you noticed an oak flower or a grass flower? And what, in heaven's name, is a ragweed anyway?

Pretty flowers, showy flowers are almost never responsible for hay fever. And the reason we know they don't give you hay fever is because they're, well, pretty. Give me just a moment to explain, and I promise you will never sneeze at another goldenrod for the rest of your years.

Hay fever, you need to know, happens when the reproductive habits of plants go haywire, and the pollen that was supposed to fertilize another flower suddenly decides to make out with your mucuous membranes. Surrounded by all that fluid, the pollen grain believes it has found the top of a flower stamen, and starts digging around looking for an ovary.

Your body reacts to this unwelcome amorous activity by releasing an army of very complicated molecules called histamines, which lead to watery eyes, itchy skin and AH-CHOO!

But that pollen will never find its way to your nose if it doesn't become airborne. And only certain kinds of flowers -- usually the ugly ones, the ones you never notice -- produce the kind of pollen that can become airborne.

Here's why: Almost all showy plants prefer to be pollinated by insects. To attract the attention of potential insect pollinators, they hang out a neon sign -- a big plume of showy yellow flowers, for example.

Now get this: Since these plants are designed to be pollinated by insects, the pollen they produce is relatively large and heavy and can't travel very far without the assistance of an insect. So it's virtually impossible for the wind to stir up a pollen grain, send it flying through the air and deposit it strategically up your nose.

The truth is, virtually all pretty flowers are insect pollinated, and that, of course, is why they are pretty.

The only way you're going to get their pollen up your nose is to act like an insect and poke your nose inside the flower.
On the other hand, there are a lot of plants in the animal kingdom that haven't devoted a lot of energy to looking pretty. Their flowers are small, inconspicuous brown and green things that you'd never notice, even if you were an insect. Their pollen grains, as a consequence, are light and microscopic, perfectly designed to be lifted off the flower by a gust of wind and carried for miles through the air in search of another flower.

Unfortunately, wind being an unpredictable thing, some of these pollen grains get lost, and attempt to carry out their reproductive functions somewhere deep inside your sinuses. As soon as they nuzzle up to the cells of your skin, you sneeze.

Ragweed is one of these wind-pollinated transgressors. It may be the most common blooming plant of the fall season, but you never notice it because the flowers are a homely greenish brown, almost indistinguishable from the stems and leaves.

Nonetheless, it's churning out buckets of tee-nincey pollen grains that blow all over the place in search of other ragweeds.

Mobilians, incensed by ragweed's violation of their nasal sanctity, immediately look around for something to blame. And there, blooming in all of its yellow-plumed splendor, is goldenrod.

The dull-as-toast ragweed -- so nondescript you probably wouldn't notice it even if I described it -- is chuckling somewhere nearby. Goldenrod catches the brunt of our misplaced anxiety in fall.

Blooming grasses (yes, grasses bloom, often hanging their tiny flowers on little antennas) are usually the culprit in summer, even though we're likely to blame some innocent, exquisite flower in our garden.

In spring it's the poor old pine trees that shoulder unfair blame, as they shed conspicuous golden showers of pollen grains. Pine trees aren't actually insect pollinated, but their pollen grains are heavy and never fall far from the tree. And because they're so large, they are unlikely to ingratiate themselves with the histamines deep in your nose. Ironically, it's the far less conspicuous flowers and microscopic pollen of the oak trees -- yes, even our much beloved live oak -- that are the real source of spring allergies.

Hickories, pecans and hackberries are almost as bad. But when people start sneezing, they inevitably blame the conspicuous clouds of pine dust.

I've even known people who've gone so far as to cut down pines in an attempt to alleviate their hay fever. But they tell me not to worry. As soon as they get a chance, they say, they're going to replant with oaks. All I can do is smile and say, "Gesundheit."

Special thanks to Dr. James Bonner of UAB Medical Center and David Williams of Auburn University for their help in preparing this story.